FLIGHT International, 17 December 1977 1787
Egypt to build
Swingfire
BAG Swingfire anti-tank missiles are
to be built on the outskirts of Cairo
by Arab-British Dynamics, a joint
Arab Organisation for Industrialisa
tion (AOI)/British Aerospace com
pany. For the first two or three years,
the Egyptian factory will assemble
missiles from UK-supplied compo
nents, but later rounds will contain
more and more locally built parts until
the weapon is entirely Egyptian-built.
There have been persistent rumours
for the last few years that Egypt in
tended to build missiles and aircraft
of Western design, but the recent
agreement signed in Cairo by AOI
chairman, Dr Ashraf Marwan and
G. R. Jefferson, chairman and chief
executive of British Aerospace Dy
namics Group, is the first practical
result of European-Egyptian negotia
tions. The value of the deal is esti
mated at £40 million.
Production will start as soon as the
Egyptian factory is set up, and UK
manufacture of the components re
quired could produce more jobs at
BAC's Stevenage plant. British person
nel will be sent to Egypt to assist in
training the locally recruited labour
force.
Except for a handful of German-
designed tactical-missile prototypes
built at Helwan in the 1960s, the em
bryo Egyptian aerospace industry
lacks experience in missile construc
tion. But the armed forces could well
provide a nucleus of missile techni
cians bearing the know-how gathered
during hostilities with Israel, while at
the same time attempting to keep
Russian weapons operational in the
face of a virtual arms embargo by
the Soviets.
The Swingfire programme is not
seen simply as a Ucence-production
arrangement. Collaborative marketing
(presumably in the Middle East) and
product improvements are covered by
the Anglo-Egyptian agreement, and as
the skills of the Egyptian engineers
and technicians increase, future col
laborative developments could become
possible.
Seventy per cent of Arab-British
Dynamics' capital will be provided by
Willi
DEFENCE
AOI, the remainder by British Aero
space. The company will be managed
by a joint board of directors compris
ing six AOI representatives, including
the chairman, and three from British
Aerospace, one of whom will be execu
tive managing director.
This virtual creation from scratch
of a national missile industry could
lead to other UK weapons being built
in Egypt—the Army, for instance,
needs battlefield-mobile SAMs. Des
pite having bought a small number
of Grotale batteries, the service con
tinues to display much interest in
Tracked Rapier. Production of this
missile would be a very much more
complex undertaking than that of the
relatively simple Swingfire. The US
under-estimated the difficulty of
licence-building Roland, but the manu
facture of a weapon of similar com
plexity, although a major undertaking
for Egypt, might be the quickest way
of introducing that nation to current
European technology.
KC-135 grows winglets in drive for efficiency
BOEING WICHITA is to build a set
of vertical aerofoils to be mounted on
the wingtips of a KC-135. The goal
of the $3-1 million project is to
reduce cruising drag by about eight
per cent. If successful, such a modifi
cation to the entire KC-135 fleet could
save more than 45 million gallons of
fuel, based on 1975 aircraft utilisation.
Each winglet will be 9 -3ft high and
6-lft wide at the base, tapering to
1 • 9ft at the tip. According to pro
gramme manager W. J. Rohling,
Boeing began research into winglets
in 1974. The pattern to be used was
designed by Nasa, but Boeing will
build a pair of the 3001b surfaces then
modify about 20ft of the outboard
wings of a test aircraft.
The winglet primary structure will
be aluminium but the majority of the
secondary structure will be made from
epoxy glass laminate. Each winglet
will be fitted with accelerometers,
strain gauges and pressure sensors,
while the aircraft itself will also be
instrumented so that data such as air
craft lift, drag and stability charac
teristics can be measured.
USAF KC-135 tankers could be retrofitted with
the drag-reducing winglets shown in this
artist's impression
The winglets will be installed on the
aircraft at the Dryden Flight Test
Centre, Edwards AFB, Calif. Flight
testing will be carried out in 1979 by
the USAF and Nasa, with Boeing pro
viding engineering support.
If the trials are successful, winglets
could be installed on the entire KC-135
fleet, but the original choice of trials
aircraft was influenced by the fact
that the wing could easily be modified
and was of such a size that the data
gathered could be applied to existing
and proposed transport aircraft.
B-52 goes
solid-state
BOEING WICHITA is to refine the
avionics in USAF B-52G/Hs to im
prove the aircraft's ability to navigate
to and attack targets on both stand
off and penetrating missions. Under
the $8 • 2 million contract, company
engineers will define a new offensive
avionics system (OAS) to meet Strate
gic Air Command requirements.
The present analogue equipment
carried by these aircraft uses 1950-
vintage vacuum-tube (valve) tech
nology, and the service has become
concerned with its performance limit
ations and maintenance costs. These
problems become even more acute
now that the B-52 is to soldier on for
at least another decade in place of the
cancelled B-l.
The solid-state, digital replacement
electronics will give the ageing